


Wanderer Between The Worlds

by rekishi



Category: Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson
Genre: Book: Deadhouse Gates, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, post-Deadhouse Gates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rekishi/pseuds/rekishi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watching Ammanas sitting on his throne woven of shadows, surrounded by the five remaining Hounds, had an unnerving quality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanderer Between The Worlds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhaella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhaella/gifts).



> This is a treat. I hope you still enjoy it, even though it doesn't fit exactly what you wanted (but writing Ammanas is really hard, I don't have a good grasp on him).
> 
> Rating just to be on the safe side.
> 
> Thanks to carmenta, who did the beta for this more or less on the fly and at hurried request.

Watching Ammanas sitting on his throne woven of shadows, surrounded by the five remaining Hounds, had an unnerving quality.

It was a rare feeling for Cotillion. If waiting was a soldier's game, it was an art for assassins. His kind had perfected it, elevated the wait for the intended victim into something to be cherished. He had taught his Talons to be patient, decades ago. That might be the only reason they still existed today, in one form or another, somewhere beneath the surface, hidden deep within the Empire where agents of the Claw would never find them. Would never even start to look.

Surly might think them gone. If only that woman knew how wrong she was.

Cotillion drew shadows around himself once more and silently left the King of High House Shadow to whatever he was doing with the pups. Shadow Keep was an oppressive place, even for one of its gods. He felt the gaze of Apt on him, of her young charge, Panek. Another pair that was disquieting, if for wholly other reasons. Panek's ghost vision was something Cotillion would have to investigate further when he had the time. Obviously, the boy saw the Shadow Realm as it once had been, not as it was today, leveled earth and ash. He possessed the same vision as the Hounds...and that those erstwhile servants of the Realm saw more than its masters was a cause for concern.

The more time passed, the stronger Cotillion felt that they - Shadowthrone and himself - were merely tolerated, rather than accepted as what they saw themselves. Oh, they were gods, as far as mortals were concerned. Or rather, where the specific subset of humans were concerned. The Deck of Dragons had accepted High House Shadow, the patterns of the Fatid accommodated them...and yet something was wrong. It didn't start with Panek, or even the Hounds. Maybe it started at the frayed edges of the Realm. How Shadow bled from Meanas to Rashan and back. And somewhere else. Somewhere that was not accessible to Cotillion.

Shadowthrone didn't share his concerns.

He had changed. Ammanas no longer was Kallenved, at whose side Cotillion had stood unerringly when he had still been Dancer. And he continued changing. Shadowthrone hardly ever assumed a form anymore that wasn't made up of shadows, even though he was able to. His motivations for his actions seemed...pettier than when he had been the Malazan Emperor. Far removed from the man who had ordered the carving of _Elemental Forces In Opposition_ into the Imperial Gate in Unta.

Cotillion would continue to stand at his side. Those were not only his vows, but essentially that was his task and function as the Assassin of High House Shadow, among other things. Yet he had doubts. He had listened when Apsalar - as she now called herself - and the soldier Fiddler had uncovered his identity. Her assessment that he didn't trust anyone any longer was correct, even though he would never admit it. He would have trusted Dassem even now, but he was gone. Not so much dead, as everyone in the Empire thought, as vanished - the Lord of Tears had ever acted according to his own sentiments, after all.

Sometimes, Cotillion could still glimpse Kellanved in the god he had become. When he had talked to those Malazan soldiers and sent Fiddler back to Malaz City. It had pained Cotillion to hear Kellanved speaking of the worthiness of soldiers in a voice he hadn't heard in years. Fiddler and Kalam calling him by his old name must have triggered...something.

And even so he wasn't in agreement with Shadowthrone's decisions. Cotillion knew what he wanted to do with those children Apt had saved. He knew why they had been delivered into the care of Kalam and Minala, he a former Claw assassin and a woman who was anything but a helpless damsel, and he knew there was a necessity for an army - but these were children. If Panek was any kind of measure, all of them were deeply disturbed and had lost most of what made them human, yet to convert them into a defensive army seemed wrong.

Those thoughts were hypocrisy, of course. They - he - had not done differently with Apsalar all those years ago. Having her turn her back on them had tugged at something that Cotillion had thought lost with his ascension. He could have taken all his skills and his memories from her when he left her on that distant continent of Genabackis, yet what he had said to Panek was true, in a way she was his daughter. And he would not leave his daughter undefended, even if she chose to go back to being a fisher girl. Because sooner or later she would realize she had stopped being destined to be just that. Because however much she might wish it, the link between them could not be severed.

The only true mystery was the sapper Fiddler. He shouldn't have been. Dancer had known the Bridgeburners, the core squads that had emerged from Raraku so many years ago. Yet there was something new about him, something not-yet-settled. And his determination to return to the ranks to fight the Whirlwind was...disquieting. The Bridgeburners had stopped just being soldiers a long time ago, they had become legends shrouded in rumour among the legions of the Malazan Empire long before the night of the Shadow Moon. Still, this was an unforeseen development and would require further thought and observation.

Cotillion tore his gaze away from the distance, where Panek had told him he saw forests, fir and redwood trees reaching into the sky and casting deepest shadows onto the ground.

Much as they sought to deny it, he and Ammanas were still wanderers between the worlds. And they would likely remain as such until not only they could let go of their, however feeble, hold on the mortal world, but also until the last mortal to remember them had entered Hood's Realm.

And yet the Rope had the distinct feeling that something else entirely would come to pass first. Call it the sixth sense of an assassin. Something was in the air, the ground they walked on, the very fabric of what stitched the Realms together.

Rood howled in the distance.


End file.
